


And Now the Wheels of Heaven Stop

by elijah_was_a_prophet



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:48:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21814678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elijah_was_a_prophet/pseuds/elijah_was_a_prophet
Summary: Kitty, in grief and in joy.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 28
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	And Now the Wheels of Heaven Stop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tapochki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tapochki/gifts).



> Thanks to olympvs for being my beta!

Kitty waited for years after the collapse. London, and the entirety of the Commonwealth, was changing. Jakob sent her excited letters from the continent and she sent bland ones back, only commenting on Ghoul’s Night as necessary. She hadn’t told him about how ancient she looked, or how she now lived in a flat under the name Florence Greengrass. The flat had a parakeet named Batty and was paid for by her salary as a small-time paralegal (she’d gone to law school since the world ended).

Magic wasn’t technically banned, but most magicians had hidden it away. They knew their kind were not welcome here. You’d still see them, of course, stinking of sulfur and casting shifty glances at the world around them. But the haughty bearing and imperious posturing was gone. Without their egos, most magicians were skinny little men in ill-advised suits with a penchant for capes.

Despite the taboo, Kitty still used magic. She didn’t see the point of hand-copying when spells existed to make it easier, and many of the magician’s estates had magical items she didn’t feel safe handling without a few wards. Gradually her colleagues gave all of those tasks to her, until she felt the need to occasionally summon a spirit to help.

“Not him,” she told herself whenever she drew chalk pentacles and laid down fresh herbs. “Never again.”

But the bright flame of Bartimaeus shone brighter the more obstinate spirits Kitty met. He might have been sarcastic, but she trusted him to tell her the truth about if something was a packaged flux or a snuffbox.

 _When you have difficult decisions, how do you make them?_ she wrote to Jakub.

_I think about what would happen if I didn’t._

That was as good of a reason as any. Kitty lit the candles that night.

She called into the Other Place, and remembered it like she always did during summonings. Colors. Lights. Infinity. No wonder spirits hated being ripped from there-it was freeing in a way Earth could never be. Nine seconds. Seven seconds. There was a puff of smoke and then Ptolemy stood in the circle, aviator’s jacket on.

“Long time no see.”

Kitty hugged him. “I have a job for you, and then you can go back.”

“I just got here, and you want me to leave already?”

“I know you don’t like to stay on Earth for too long.” She walked from the side room into her kitchen, where a small black box sat. “There’s this mysterious box we found in someone’s house that shocked me when I touched it. Nobody else wants to even look at it.”

Without being asked Bartimaeus slid open the box, then almost dropped it. “Silver,” he noted. “This entire thing is a cage. See the latch on the side? There’s probably an imp, or a minor foliot trapped in there.”

“Then how could it shock me?”

“The latch is broken. Poor bastard has probably been fighting to get out for over a hundred years.”

“So, how do we let him out?”

“You want to?”

Kitty’s mouth fell open in shock. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“This amulet is a failsafe luggage finder. If anybody but the owner tries to pick up whatever it’s attached to they get a shock. You’re a government employee. Selling it would be a good way to pick up some extra, ah, whatever it is you use for currency. Shekels?”

“There’s a sentient being inside. We have to free it. And people don’t like magic nowadays. It all came down around the magician’s ears, just like you said.”

“It happens to all civilizations. Just be glad you won’t be around for the collapse.”

He’d outlive her, she realized. Far in the future she’d be nothing and he’d still be glowing. Something seemed infinitely sad about Bartimaeus in that moment, wearing a long dead boy’s face. Would he remember her? Would he remember Nathaniel?

No time to be gloomy now, Kitty thought. She had a spirit to free.

She kept Bartimaeus around until the end of the week, at which point she dismissed him and went back to her job. He’d remained relatively snark free, occasional grandstanding about how the Night of the Ghouls should have made him a national hero aside.

She realized after she’d dismissed him that he hadn’t seen the John Lockwood memorial bench. Maybe next time, if there was one.

It was actually another two summonings before he got to see it. The second had been a hasty response to a vase with two djinn, and she’d dismissed him while the shards of pottery were still hot. There hadn’t even been time to share a cup of tea.

The third was purposeful and complex. She summoned him with looser bonds, since it would be a longer time, and there was a provision that would allow excursions back to the other world if needed. They had discovered a mass of concealed magic that took up three block’s worth of basements, a possible secret storeroom linked to everyone from Makepeace to the Prime Minister.

“There’s something we’re going to see first,” she told Bartimaeus on the bus. They were standing shoulder to shoulder and resolutely ignoring a woman who clearly noticed that he was not human. “A monument.”

The bus stopped and she lead him off.

John Lockwood’s bench sat in the melted remains of the building. Vines were planted at the base of the rubble, but it was winter and they were brown. Dry leaves blew through the blast crater at the center.

Bartimaeus sat on it. “Isn’t different from any other bench.”

“It’s his gravestone.” She sat next to him and looked up at the gray sky. “It’s Nathaniel’s.”

“It’s John Lockwood’s.” Bartimaeus propped his feet up in Kitty’s lap. “Not Nathaniel’s.”

“What’s the difference?”

“One of them is dead as a doornail. The other one is less certain.”

Kitty frowned. “You’ve got a minute to explain what exactly that means.”

“I think Nathaniel went through Ptolemy’s Gate. In the final battle he dismissed me, but he dismissed himself as well. So seconds before he died, when he whispered my name in fear, I was able to grab him. He was there for a flash in the Other Place before I lost track.”

“But his body-“

“You protect the body while crossing through the Gate so you can come back to it. The spirit doesn’t need it to survive.”

She sat in shock and stared at her feet. Imagined Nathaniel back, all lanky limbs and snarky comments and terribly tacky capes. It was unfair, she thought, to have the possibility. Her grieving was done, with no more room to grieve again.

“So he’s stuck there forever?”

Bartimaeus waved his hand and made a noncommittal noise. “There’s a thousand other fops with bad hair you could meet who are on this plane of existence. Go stand in Mercy Park and you won’t be able to swing an imp without hitting one.”

Kitty glared at him hard enough to wither plants.

“Okay, maybe we can get him back. I did feel his spirit brush past mine during my last stay. He was thinking very loudly about poor organization. And you, of course.”

There was more to say, but the job called. At the basement they found a gaggle of policemen drinking tea and an excavator, digging up the street to reveal an iron cage. It was enclosing brick that had been laid down in the days of Karl the Great, so old she could feel the hum of power.

“There’s something nasty in there,” Kitty said. “And we have to deal with it.”

“Can’t be worse than Makepeace.” Bartimaeus shifted into a manticore and galloped towards the entrance. “You coming with?”

“Of course.”

Yet again the material world distracted from the spiritual one. Kitty oversaw the removal of bottles containing grimacing imps, rare tribal artifacts, summoning horns, amulets, scrying glasses, seven league boots, magic lighters, and in one notable instance a bone harp with strands of human teeth as decoration.

“Morbid,” Bartimaeus remarked. “I think it’d look lovely in your living room next to the spider plant.”

“It’s going on the truck. Hopefully to be burnt.”

“I guess you won’t want the crystal skull, then.”

“Put it down, Bartimaeus. We aren’t in a souvenir shop.”

“Magicians are always concerned about looking without being. That crystal skull is perfectly harmless.”

“It’s still government property. And don’t even ask about the sarcophagus.”

“Oooh, that’s some nasty business there. Three very angry afrits have been stuck in that thing since King Rames did that number with the chariots.”

The two men carrying the sarcophagus turned white as sheets of paper. Kitty pulled her chalk from her bag and found a clear corner.

“I’m detonating that now. Everybody out.”

“Is that-”

“I have resistance. And magical shields-Bartimaeus, find me an amulet.”

Her circle was a bit uneven, but the runes were spelled right and a clay ushabiti was placed at the four corners for extra protection. Bartimaeus stood beside her. His energy reinforced the barrier as she chanted.

There were two parts to the dismissal she and Bartimaeus had made. First the container that held the spirits had to be broken, and then a portal to the Other Place had to be opened. Sulfurous clouds of accumulated magic steamed off the coffin as she chanted the wards to shreds, supported by Bartimaeus’ power and her own inner justice. Spirits were only cruel because they wanted to be free of this oppressive plane of mud and water. They might be less cruel if human kindness was shown towards them.

“It’s going to burst!” Bartimaeus yelled. Kitty ducked and let the collection of amulets protect her from the blast, although a few shards of stone did wedge themselves in her hand and shoulder. The afrits boiled in their circle, great masses of fire and false-flesh and eyes that burned incandescent with hate.

WHO DISTURBS US, they screamed in the language of light.

“I’m sending you back!” Kitty yelled. “Back to your home! Back where you belong!”

Her chants grew louder and louder as the afrits continued to scream. Her face was burning from the heat. Bartimaeus was a cool presence beside her. The portal opened, a soap bubble of a window, and the afrits blazed through. She collapsed as if melted.

“Hey, are you going to wake up any time soon?”

Kitty opened her eyes to see Bartimaeus inches from her face. Behind him milled her coworkers. Annoyingly enough, the truck wasn’t even filled or closed. Could they really do nothing without her?

“Was it group break time?” she asked Bartimaeus. “Nobody’s moved anything else out of the basement.”

“There’s nothing left in the basement,” one of her coworkers said. “The demons burned it all up. Neil fainted when he heard the screaming.”

Neil, a gangly youth of nineteen, was passed out on the sidewalk. Kitty rolled her eyes. “And when the screaming stopped?”

“You were passed out in a circle with that weird guy.”

Bartimaeus opened his mouth to argue but then reconsidered, showing that his time with Kitty had taught him something. Instead he helped her over to the basement door, revealing that the interior was entirely carbon and ash.

“That explosion released a lot of unhappy spirits. You’re lucky your face and your arse didn’t end up swapped.”

“Magical resistance, Bart.”

“Resistance doesn’t- Bart?”

“Bartimaeus is too long. Bart, on the other hand, is a good name. Sturdy.”

“Plebeian,” he wailed.

Kitty grinned as she walked back outside and wondered how long it’d take him to figure out that it was a joke.

That night she sat with a stack of reports on her couch and a cup of tea, Bartimaeus sitting beside her with his own reading. She had to figure out which magical items needed personal attention. He needed to figure out how to get Nathaniel back.

“Can we just summon him?” she asked. “If he’s like any other spirit he’ll come when he’s called.”

“Delicate spirits need delicate summonings. Nathaniel currently has less power than even the puniest of imps.”

A horrible thought came to her. “Summoning wouldn’t destroy him, would it?”

“I don’t know.” Bartimaeus looked grim. “You survived because I was protecting you- no thanks necessary, by the way- but he’s alone. The transition might rip him to shreds.”

This is why she hadn’t wanted the possibility of seeing him again-the possibility of grieving him again. And it would be worse knowing she’d destroyed him. If he could only live in the Other Place, maybe that was for the best.

“Could I cross over and see him?”

“Do you want to die of old age at 23? Humans aren’t meant to leave their bodies for so long.”

“So we have to summon him, then.”

“It might kill him. Obliterate him completely.”

“And if it doesn’t I could see him again.”

“You don’t think that’s selfish?”

Kitty was taken aback. “Selfish? He’s probably lonely there.”

“That’s a human perspective. To spirits the Other Place is full of life.”

“And he’s a human.”

“Not anymore. He’s been changed.”

“I knew him as a human, once. That’s how I remember him.”

“Then leave him in memories.”

She shook her head. “I can’t do that. Even if it is selfish, I want to see him one more time.” Kitty risked cutting a glance at Bartimaeus. “And I think you miss him, as well.”

“Not enough to murder him.”

“Who says it’s murder? For all you know, he could survive.”

“And if you’re wrong-”

“Someone once told me the best way to make a difficult decision is to consider what would happen if you didn’t do it.” Her voice cracked. “He’s good as dead unsummoned.”

Bartimaeus shook his head. “I’ll show you how to do it, but the act is on your shoulders.”

He passed her a sheaf of notes and she began to read.

Her setup was bare-bones. A chalk circle was drawn, with a candle on one side and a bundle of valerian opposing it. Her summons were light as gossamer and soft as a whisper. She could hear Bartimaeus pattering around in the other room, a few starlings on the gutters, and her own heartbeat.

Nineteen seconds she waited.

Please let him come, she thought. Don’t make me cry again. She was ready to break, about to step out, when a tiny blob appeared in the other circle.

“Bartimaeus!” Kitty yelled. “Bartimaeus, come see!”

Bartimaeus came running in and looked at the blob, which was oozing about in a gelatinous way.

“That’s it?” he said.

The blob attempted an obscene gesture, and Kitty was ready to sob in relief. She watched as it grew, first trying an earthworm, then a beetle.

“First times on Earth are always hard,” Bartimaeus said. “Oooh, look, I think he’s trying to be a frog.”

It wasn’t long before the blob formed a man, one which stood on his own two feet for the first time in years.

“Kitty?” Nathaniel asked confusedly. “I’ve had the oddest time.”

“I know,” she said, and then, “I’m glad you’re back.”


End file.
